Invidious, a privacy-frontend for YouTube receives a Cease and Desist notice from Google

[Ink]

Content source

https://www.ghacks.net/2023/06/10/google-is-threating-privacy-friendly-youtube-frontend-invidious/

The open source project Invidious has received a cease and desist notice from Google owned YouTube. In the letter, which the project team published here on the project website, Google claims that it has become aware of the project only recently.

It claims that Invidious is violating YouTube's API Services terms of service and developer policies. Google lists numerous policies that it believes Invidious violates and is asking the project team to correct the issues or shut down its service. To do so, Google is giving the project 7 days time.

What makes Invidious attractive to users is that it lets anyone watch any public video on YouTube without advertisement or tracking.

Google appears unaware that Invidious is not using YouTube's official APIs for providing its service. As such, the project team has never agreed to YouTube's terms and can't be in violation of them as a consequence.

The project team is aware that this may not protect them from the wrath of one of the largest corporations in the world.

For now Invidious is not complying with the demand and stating that it "won't do anything" unless forced to do so, e.g., by law.

YouTube legal team contacted us · Issue #3872 · iv-org/invidious

They don't understand that we never agreed to any of their TOS/policies, they don't understand that we don't use their API. What now? Things will continue normally until they can't anymore. Assume ...

github.com